A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [124]
Now, what’s this? BP and the feds are back to wondering whether the bottom kill is even necessary.
The Thadmiral can’t really be telling us that the blown-out well may not need to have heavy fluid and cement pumped into it through the relief well after all, can he? I guess he is. He’s saying, “A bottom kill finishes this well.” Then he adds, “The question is whether it’s already been done with the static kill.”
I don’t get it.
This statement seems—what’s a good word?—it seems evasive. How could no one have even hinted at this possibility all along? What’s up? The relief well is late, they’ve been hemming and hawing, and now this.
It appears that after the relief well intersects its target—assuming it does, eventually—BP wants to check to see whether the cement pumped in through the top of the blown-out well went all the way down the casing, went out through the bottom of the well, and came up far enough between the casing and the rock to have plugged the whole shebang to secure satisfaction.
If so—spokesmen now say—sending cement in near the bottom might not be necessary. But as the Associated Press puts it, this new idea “would be a hard sell to a public that’s heard for weeks that the bottom kill is the only way to ensure the well is no longer a danger to the region.”
Exactly.
What is Allen thinking? The Thadmiral has zero to gain by even introducing this as a question now. It once again undermines the perceived credibility of everything he and other federal officials have been saying for months—even if what he’s saying is perfectly reasonable. Sometimes you just gotta do what you’ve been promising.
I admire Thad Allen’s willingness to reassess and to change course accordingly. It’s a sign of intelligence. A foolish consistency indicates a small mind. He may be right, and he’s certainly being reasonable.
But people don’t want to feel reasoned with. They want to feel safe. This whole disaster is psychological almost as much as it is physical—and America hates flip-floppers. To suddenly open this as a question scratches the scab just forming over this gaping wound. For all of us who’ve been assured for months that a relief well that pumps cement is the only assurance, it feels excruciating.
Emotions. The public mood is at least as big an issue as the oil. I don’t think the officials have realized this. If they have, they haven’t dealt with it skillfully.
Emotions dominated the region while the oil flowed. Yes, there is real blame for what caused the blowout and for the utter unpreparedness to anticipate and deal with a blowout one mile deep. Some places, like Grand Isle, received awful coatings of oil. Wildlife suffered, and there is damage to natural habitats (though, luckily, less than feared).
But the two most devastating social and economical consequences of the blowout—the region-wide tourism meltdown, the vast fisheries closures—have been, in much of the wider region, emotional responses to aesthetics and perceptions, rather than necessary responses to real dangers. That’s been true even where little oil reached. Panic, blind anger, and the months-long inability to know how long the oil would continue flowing have dominated people’s responses to the event—including my own—especially in the months from late April until early August, when the leak was finally stopped.
Now that the oil has stopped flowing, we can begin to assess the extent of the event, the damage done, the prospects for recovery—and we can begin to calm down.
We’ve seen what caused this well to blow out, and the varied responses during the chaotic months while the oil was flowing. Now we can afford ourselves a little more calmness, clarity,